Lone Locust Productions

Author: Eugene Glover

  • iPad is Seriously Impacting My Blogging

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    Now, the debate about keyboards is mostly over. When the iPhone came out naysayers and competitors alike all said, “I’ll die before you rip my ‘real’ keyboard from my cold, dead hands!”

    And while there’s still people out there like that, the competitors have largely fallen by the wayside and adopted software keyboards. Adam Smith’s invisible hand of capitalism once again shows us the way to the future. While that may reflect the evolutionary path forward, is it really the best? What are the long-term implications?

    Long-term readers of my blog will know that I love my iPhone. It is a transformative device, much the home microwave oven. Things are simply not the same once you have one.

    I have little or no problem with the software keyboard, but I do recognize its limitations and frustrations. Then my iPad comes along. I love my iPad. I find that it is increasingly marginalizing my laptop in my life.

    As a side note, while Apple may have played the “Windows is oh-so-vulnerable” and “Macs just work” cards heavily during the renaissance, I’ve long felt that the reason Apple Mac sales have increased is because they’ve built and bundled a machine that correctly addresses what people really do with their computers. We don’t do spreadsheets and word processing, we do email, web-browsing, photos, videos and music. They correctly assessed that the market isn’t about a computer “being a tool that can do anything” but instead made a tool that does what people do.

    A good craftsman doesn’t blame his tools but he always has the right tools for the job. Having once worked in one of the trades, I can tell you the difference between having the right tool and a makeshift or general purpose tool is the difference between night and day. (Alton Brown and his stand on uni-tasking tools be damned.)

    This, above all else, is the brilliance of the Mac resurgence. And, of course, like all computers, the Mac is still a tool that can be made to do most anything. That is still the nature of the programmable computer.

    The iPad is a bit of a refinement over the Mac in this respect. It’s an even narrower tool, focused on an even smaller subset of day-to-day computers, but, significantly, still a subset that makes up the vast majority of those tasks. Most of us don’t make movies, we watch them, we don’t make music, we listen to it and we show off more pictures than we take. Use that assumption and make the device a more convenient form factor and Apple has (it would seem by sales numbers) hit upon the winning formula again.

    Yes, there are times when I’m using my iPad and need to do something that I cannot do, but that’s increasingly less often as third-party apps come along to do the most amazing host of things. If I’m not at work, where I still use my laptop for software development, I can go days without using the laptop. The largest deficiency area of the iPad when we were in Taiwan is the inability to load pictures directly from my camera to the iPad. (Yes, I know there’s a camera-connection kit, but I couldn’t obtain one, and they still seem to be in constrained supply.) The laptop is increasingly irrelevant. With an SD card reader and a built-in camera (rumored for later iPads) the laptop will slip further into obsolescence.

    Let’s diverge for another tangent for a moment. Apple has got a new data facility being built in North Carolina, and it’s a monster. Lots of people suspect that, in conjunction with clues based on Apple’s purchases of other companies, that iTunes will be adding a streaming service. I suspect that’s true. Why not? If you actually can rip people off for a monthly “service” fee instead of actually selling them a product, any businessman would. The health club industry has given us the model for all our future personal bankruptcies.

    But actually, I think Apple has something grander in mind. I think the iPad (and the iPhone as well) are going to go (hopefully optionally) from computer mandatory to computer optional. I think they’ll begin to offer (iPads at first) the ability to buy, setup and use an iPad without needing a computer at all. It will be perfect for someone like my dad who, rather than replace his aging computer, could downsize to an iPad – provided that he had sufficient room somewhere in the cloud for his mail, contacts, music, pictures and videos. Many other computer-less people I know were interested in the iPad, until they learned it didn’t replace a computer, it had to be an extension to one. That’s what’s Apple is up to, if they’re smart.

    I have no doubt they’re smart. One day soon, iPad will have the words on the box, “Requires computer with Mac OSX 10.X or Windows PC with Itunes or MobileMe account.”

    Back on topic, because that’s not what this post is about, it’s about that damned software keyboard. It works sufficiently well for Twitter, Facebook, Friendface, Jitter, Flickr, most e-mail, notes and websites… but it fails miserably when i want to make a post like this one.

    So, does that mean the iPad fails as my primary device? No, it means my behavior changes and I stop writing long blog posts.

    I’m afraid the ipad will be the true dawn of the age of Twitter. People will voluntarily express themselves in 140 snippets.

    Considering most people haven’t got even 140 characters worth of anything meaningful to say, perhaps that’s a good thing.

  • The Things They’ll Do to Children

    Michelle Singing from Lone Locust Productions on Vimeo.

    Kids and Karaoke don’t mix!

    Apparently this is what they get up to in Taiwan when I’m not around. Well, better while I’m not around.

  • Things I Love About Taiwan

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    The list that follows is based strictly on my experiences in Taiwan, and while the list might seem facetious, it really isn’t. Taiwan is a bit like a crazy old uncle. He just doesn’t seem right in the head, but at the same time he’s a cool old dude.

    (more…)

  • Taipei in June, Phoenix in July

    It’s the difference between “hot and miserable” and “miserably hot.”

    Taipei’s heat and humidity will make you want to die. Phoenix’s will actually kill you.

  • Taiwan 2010 – Torn Between a Steak and a Vomitorium

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    “At no point in this story is actual vomit involved.”

    Honestly, I am seriously torn about how to “pitch” this particular blog post. It all relates to a single story and it has two different facets, it has the comedy vomit angle and it has the high praise for excellent food angle. You’d think they’d be utterly incompatible and yet they are one and the same story. Should I write the article and tell how amazingly wonderful the No. 168 Prime Steakhouse in Taipei is or go with with the “gosh, they sure are different in Taiwan” angle and get the cheap laughs? I am torn.

    I’ve decided I’ll just tell the story as it happened.

    Longtime readers of my blog will know that I have a very short links list. I read from over 150 blogs and newsfeeds daily, but there are only a few that, for some reason or another, I choose to promote. (Whether or not that promotion is appreciated is another question.)

    One of them is A Hungry Girl’s Guide to Taipei. This is a blog that reviews restaurants in Taipei. It’s in English. I speak English. It’s about eating. I eat. it’s about Taipei. I go to Taipei. It’s uncanny. It’s as if it was written just for me.

    I corresponded with her a little bit on Twitter and she recommended No. 168 Prime Steakhouse, saying that their “steaks were wonderful”, which is all I need to hear about any restaurant. I admit, I didn’t even go see if she had a review, I just passed the info along to my wife saying, “If your parents are looking for restaurants to take me to, I hear No. 168 Prime Steakhouse is ‘wonderful’”

    And so it was on my final night in Taipei, they took the entire family to No. 168 Prime Steakhouse, which, it turns out is in the five-star Grand Victoria Hotel. (To be honest, I couldn’t find any documentation that said it was actually a five-star hotel, but if it isn’t, they’re trying really hard.)

    I packed very light for this trip, getting my entire kit inside a piece of luggage could, if lucky, be considered carry-on. I had 4 pair of shorts, 4 t-shirts, one pair of pants, one polo shirt, 2 pair of sandals and 1 pair of tennis shoes. I got all dressed up in the tennis shoes, pants and polo shirt, thinking the place was probably a little more upscale than sandals, shorts and a Loch Ness Monster Adventure Club shirt, which was my typical daily wear. I was; however, still seriously underdressed for the No. 168 Prime. Luckily we had a private room, where they waited on us hand and foot and constantly served us expensive bottled water. Their prices were… high, and I was a little embarrassed to have suggested this restaurant because I knew my father-in-law was paying.

    But, he had checked the place out first, so he knew what he was getting into. I only found out when I saw the menu and started doing exchange rate calculations in my head and going, “That can’t be right. US$ 90 for a steak?”

    My father-in-law had already decided on their monthly special, which this month was a 45oz American Kobe Beef Ribeye (serves 4-5 people). This was their special for the month and it was, by their own statement, “The best piece of meat we have in the restaurant.” It cost US$ 150.

    My mother-in-law doesn’t eat much meat, and my father-in-law can be a fairly moderate eater (except at all-you-can-eat places), so when he suggested that we get the special, I figured that would work out just about right for the four of us. The kids could order a dish and share and my bother-in-law and his girlfriend could get whatever they wanted.

    Wrong, my father-in-law ordered the steak with the intention that all eight of us would share it, and then if somehow we we still hungry after each consuming 5.6oz of steak, we could order something else.

    I can tell you, unreservedly, it was the best chunk of steak I’ve ever had in my life. It was sublime. I managed to get three strips of it, as did Michelle. Neither one of us got enough, and I can hardly see how there was enough to even get a start for the others.

    When it was clear it wasn’t enough, they suggested I pick something else to order, like a New York steak. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. How do you follow up the best steak you’ve ever had? You don’t, and you certainly don’t follow it with a “lesser” piece of steak. (Typically, I’d never call a New York Strip a “lesser” piece of steak than a ribeye, but in this case, it had to be.)

    So I am left with the all-too-brief memory of this wonderful steak, which has set the bar very high indeed for future steaks.

    I should also mention that their bread, made on the premises by some sort of low-termperature, 16-hour baking process, their Caesar salad and french onion were all also very good.

    I will heartily shout the praises for No. 168 Prime Steakhouse. Exquisite!

    (Oh, and the hotel had free wifi, so I was able to hook up on the iPhone while at dinner. Another plus.)

    Hardly seems appropriate to drift onto the topic of vomit at this point, does it? Let me be very, very clear on this point: At no point in this story is actual vomit involved. There is nothing whatsoever in my opinion that should be associated with vomit and this wonderful steakhouse, or indeed what appears to be an excellent hotel, but they did bring it upon themselves.

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    This is all because of a button; a wonderfully mysterious, enigmatic, lovely, classically red button.

    If it isn’t painfully obvious, let me reiterate that I don’t speak much Chinese – certainly not enough to carry on a conversation, although I can sometimes pick up the gist of a conversation. I read even less Chinese, but I do know a few hundred characters (sometimes I know them from my study of Japanese, other times from my study of Chinese.) One of the patterns I can recognize is Chinese for “please don’t.” This is important to my story and not just me rambling, so keep that in the back of your mind: I am functionally illiterate in Chinese, but not completely illiterate. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

    James, at 5 years old, as taken up what appears to be an obsession with squat toilets. Whenever he knows there a squat toilet, he wants to go pee in it. (What could be more fun that peeing in a hole in the ground to a five-year old?) Shortly after our arrival at No. 168, James had to go to the bathroom, and someone else took him.

    It wasn’t long afterwards that he went again, and again, someone else took him. At this point, I began to suspect that the restroom had a squat toilet and that he was a little bored with the dinner proceedings.

    On his third request to go, I took him because I also needed to use the facilities and I was curious if my hypothesis was correct. It turned out that I was only partially correct, because what appeared to be fascinating James was the sink.

    As you walk into this immaculately clean restroom, there are sinks on the left, ahead and turning a corner is a wall of urinals and behind them are the stalls. In the corner, next to the last urinal is a large sink. it’s not uncommon for restrooms in Taiwan to have a large laundry sink in them, usually with a mop nearby, and ofttimes with a cleaning lady standing there waiting for you to belly up to the urinal so that she can mop around your feet while you’re urinating. (That takes some getting used to.)

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    In this case, the “laundry” sink was spotlessly clean, oval shaped and all gleaming stainless steel, artistically lighted from above. It also had a curious grating at the bottom, which was elevated about one inch above the actual bottom of the basin. If it was a laundry sink (and I had no reason to doubt that it was) it was the most expensive, pretentious laundry sink I’ve ever seen.

    It also had, immediately above it, the button. The pretty red button. And the button had a sign, and the sign said, “[gibberish, gibberish]! Please don’t [gibberish] hand.”

    Oh, temptation, thy name is “pretty red button that says, ‘please don’t’” on thee!

    James, upon finishing up in the stall, went to the “laundry” sink and was about to wash his hands. I stopped him, and explained that this sink was not for washing hands, and that he should go use the regular sinks which had soap and towels available. He seemed remarkably disappointed and I noticed that, while clean, the sink wasn’t dry.

    Back at the table, I asked Irene if they had a similar sink in the ladies’ room. She said they did not, so I was no closer to knowing that the pretty red button said.

    Throughout the evening, James continued to ask to go back to the bathroom, and every time I’d say to him, “Don’t use that sink” and his face would get all crestfallen.

    Finally, I could stand it no more and I went back and took a picture of the sink and the sign and brought it back so that Chu-Wan could tell me what it said. At first she had the most odd look on her face end then she translated it for me.

    It says, “This is the sink for vomiting, please do not wash hands here.”

    The answer, rather than being satisfying, raised more questions than it answered. Not only does the sign on the button completely fail to tell you what the pretty red button is for, but now I wonder what a classy restaurant needs a vomit sink for??? (Apart from the obvious.)

    I can only imagine that, because it is a classy, expensive restaurant, businessmen bring clients here to wine and dine them; mostly wine them, and in the Japanese tradition, get so drunk that they vomit and then sleep on the street because it’s too late to catch the train home.

    Anyone who eats at this restaurant and has one of these wonderful steak and then vomits it up is committing a crime the culinary world, if not against humanity itself!!!

    What does that damn button do?! Does it operate a garbage disposal and grind up the debris or is it a call switch so that someone from housekeeping can quickly come make the restroom clean and pleasant for the other customers? Why is there a grate at the bottom? Wouldn’t that prevent larger chunks of matter from getting into the drain? Is it to stop the neckties of drunken vomiters from getting stuck in the running disposal unit? Is it some sort of high-tech vomitus splash guard?

    Why must my memory of this wonderful restaurant be eternally linked to questions about vomit?

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    Bottom line – This is what you should take from this blog post: No. 168 Prime Steakhouse = excellent steak.

    (But if you do happen to go there, and you visit the men’s room, don’t wash your hands in that sink, but if you do happen (perhaps by mistake) to push that pretty, red button; that incredibly tempting, wonderfully round and inviting, pretty, red button… post me a comment and tell me what it does.)

  • Taiwan 2010 – Not My Most Successful Scheme By a Long Shot

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    LA sucks.

    Jet lag sucks.

    Put together they are a massive, steaming pile of suckage.

    Make a plan that glosses over those two points and you have a recipe for failure.

    The ways in which LA sucks are many and varied, so let me come to them as flows within the narrative. For starters, LAX, the main international airport on the west coast is the worst airport I’ve ever been in. The sum total of things to do at that airport is (a) eat at bad restaurants (b) walk up and down around the outer perimeter of the of the terminals. (At least the weather is usually nice.)

    In this post-9/11 world, where you potentially need hours to clear security before your flight, airlines don’t seem to be willing to schedule connecting flights within sane times of each other. The global economic recession hasn’t help either. Airline flights have been significantly curtailed and your choice of times and airlines has been drastically reduced. We used to try to schedule our flights through San Francisco because it shorten the flight across the ocean (by increasing the length of the domestic flight) and because the airport doesn’t suck as much as LA’s, but those flights are all gone now. You used to be able to schedule a transfer within about two hours of your international departure, now, with the comparative paucity of domestic flights and the potential of long, long security waits, you must wait much longer. (In all fairness to LAX, I’ve never spent more than 10 minutes getting through security, but it isn’t about how efficient they are most of the time, it’s all about the possibility that they might not be. Missing an international flight has a lot of negative ramifications on everyone, and the airlines and the travel agents aren’t willing to take risks. Better that you should suffer with long layovers.) On this trip, our delays were over 6 hours each. 6 hours at LAX is unfavorably comparable to 6 hours reading the white pages of the telephone book on an uncomfortable (broken) bench, while eating flavorless, dry rice cakes without benefit of anything to drink – alcoholic or otherwise.

    I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with the family on the way out. 6 hours ought to be enough time to get out and do something, but instead we just ended up riding the train and eating. At least the food didn’t suck.

    My flight back, alone, was worse. Not only did I have a 6+ hour layover, but I couldn’t even get a direct flight back to Phoenix. It would take 11 and a half hours for me to get back to Phoenix. It only takes six hours to drive to Phoenix from LA.

    And thus begat my plan. To abandon my connecting flight back to Phoenix and simply rent a car one way from LA to Phoenix. I asked myself, “Would six hours in a car, after an 11 hour flight, be safe and possible?” Yes, I decided. First I considered the torture of another 6 hours in a seat: No problem, with a car you can stop and most any time and get out and walk around and stretch. Would jet lag prevent me from driving safely: No. My flight light Taipei at 4:50 in the afternoon and arrived the same day at 1:25 in the after in LA. (Yes, you travel backwards in time going from Taipei to LA) I figured that I’d be on the plane for a couple hours, they’d feed us and I’d go to sleep. It would be a little early going to bed, but I’d been napping in the afternoon lately, anyway. 1:25PM LA time is 4:25AM Taipei time. Again, a little early, but I typically wake up around 5:30, so I should, in theory, be rested and ready for the new day.

    I optimistically booked a car for 2:00PM in LA and headed out on my flight, thinking, “This may be the model for all future flights to Taipei for me.”

    So what went wrong? Most everything.

    • I didn’t sleep on the flight. I got no more than three hours sleep in three, one-hour blocks.
    • The plane travelled a long route. Typically the flight to Taiwan is up towards the pole and then across at the Aleutian Islands, then down the coast of Siberia, Korea, Japan and then to Taiwan. On the way back, they simply power straight across the ocean. (This has to do with utilizing the earth’s rotation under the plane and competing against or utilizing the jet stream. This is why the flight over is 14.5 hours, and the flight back is only 11.5 hours.) For some reason, this flight pushed us up north, crossing about parallel with Oregon and then down, overland, along the coast of California. We came in almost 30 minutes late.
    • I got through customs in record time, and I foolishly thought that might mean I’d make up some of the lost time towards picking up my car. Wrong – I got through immigration quickly, but my luggage was absolutely the last two bags to come off the plane. By the time I’d retrieved it, the line for customs was a two-hundred strong. (It moved efficiently and quickly but it was still a lot of people.)
    • The rental car place isn’t really even close to the airport. It’s a 10-15 minute drive by shuttle bus – once you’ve caught the bus. I arrived at Alamo at just 15 minutes before 3:00PM.
    • It was 45 minutes to get to me because, despite there being 40 people in line, they only ever had 3 of their 8 representative desks operating at any time, and often, the reps stopped helping customers and stood around and organized their paperwork in full sight of the fuming customers. Once to a representative, my rental took all of 5 minutes to get out the door, and I discovered, to my joy that Shakey’s Pizza (a childhood favorite but now long defunct in Arizona) was 2 blocks away. I was there by 4:00PM.
    • They were the slowest pizza place I’ve been in in years. They did have a children’s birthday party of about 40 kids, which was keeping them busy. It was over an hour to get out the door.
    • It was 5:00PM before I got traveling towards home. Given that it takes 6 hours to get to home, that now put my estimated arrival about 11:00 PM. If I had stayed on the flight, I’d be at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport at 11:30PM. I was still ahead of the plane flight, but now only by an hour to an hour and a half.

    Let me talk about another reason why LA sucks for a moment. LA and Phoenix have something in common. They bother are relatively modern cities, and their population explosions occurred since the invention of the automobile. While Los Angeles truly is the archetype of “urban sprawl”, Phoenix is right up there with it, for exactly the same reasons. Phoenix is a vast urban area. Los Angeles is quite a lot bigger still. For the record, let me say that LA is a major international city and Phoenix is a podunk. I would not deign to put these two cities in the same category. LA is in a class with New York, London, Taipei, Shanghai, etc. Phoenix is in a class with Albuquerque.

    Nonetheless, the geographic and demographic forces which shaped LA also shaped Phoenix. The major differences are these: LA has lots of things to see and do, but they’re so damned spread out that it’s a nightmare to get to them. Phoenix, on the other hand, is essentially just as spread out but because there’s nothing to do here, the issue of getting from point A to point B isn’t as acute. Also, Phoenix is a newer city and, although our freeway system is a lot smaller than the LA freeway system, our fair city (as well as many others around the US and the world) have benefited greatly because our freeway engineers grew up and were trained with the knowledge of all the freakin’ stupid, idiotic mistakes made when California built their freeway system.

    LA’s freeways are extensive, but grew organically. There is no logical pattern to them, they do not use consistent means for onramps, off-ramps, freeway junctions, signage or anything else. It’s a bit like hot and cold taps in Taiwan: You never know which one will be hot and which one will be cold, until you test it by turning it on.

    But I was armed with an auto-GPS navigation system, and, for the most part, it kept me well-informed enough to navigate the freeways across the maddening urban sprawl that is LA. Let’s go back to the list.

    • It’s 6 hours from LA to Phoenix. Unless the freeways were moving at 10-20MPH, in which it’s two days travel.
    • Funny thing about being jet lagged and not getting enough sleep, staring at the rear end of the car ahead of you in a traffic jam for nearly two hours can make you incredibly, dangerously tired.
    • When I reached Riverside (which means, basically, I was still in the LA sprawl) I saw a Motel 6 and gave up, pulled in, checked in and within 30 minutes was sound asleep, expecting to have a hard time waking up in the morning and getting going.
    • At 1:30AM I snapped wide awake. Why 1:30? Jet lag sucks, and it rarely makes much sense. 1:30AM, is 4:30PM in Taipei. Why my body spontaneously awoke – and it is like a light switching on – I was completely awake without any of the usual drowsy dragging that normally accompanies my transition from sleep to wakefulness. It was quite clear that the people in the next room hadn’t even gone to be yet.
    • I showered, ambled across the street for a big bacony, eggy breakfast at Denny’s, checked out and was on my way by 3:00AM.

    After that it was just a five and a half hour drive, with stops, getting me home at about 8:30AM, just a scant 19 hours after I arrived in LA.

    Perhaps next time I go to Taiwan, they’ll have installed a high speed railway between LA and Phoenix. Perhaps I’ll wait until they do.

  • Taiwan 2010 – This is the Sh*ts

    I’m about five hours into the 11 hour flight across the Pacific and this has been a real mixed bag of a flight. Typically, there’s not much that can make being crammed in a tin can for 11 hours “fun” but the quality of the experience can certainly vary greatly.

    I’m plunked down in row 35, which means I’m in about the 7th row of steerage passengers. I’ve got an aisle seat, which is better than not, but (once again) there’s some sort of box built into the plane beneath the seat in front of me, which means there’s no leg room at all in front of me.

    On the flight over I had the same arrangement (it’s not true of all seats, just about every fourth row on the aisle) and it somehow caused me to bruise my ankle something fierce. I couldn’t take long walks for the first 10 days because of it.

    The flight is also jammed-packed full. There is, as best I can tell, only one empty seat on the entire plane. It’s so full that many people traveling together are not seated together. This is the case with the seat next to me. It’s assigned to a 10-year old Taiwanese boy who speaks a little English. His father is back behind the toilets in the second section of steerage.

    He was one of the last to board and for awhile until he arrived I thought I was going to have an empty seat next to me. Still, a small child, provided he’s reasonably well behaved means, basically, I’m not as crammed in. A ha! Just as they closed the doors, they relocated dad and the boy together – yes, leaving the one empty seat next to me!

    I may have mentioned that the stewardesses on the outbound flight didn’t speak very clear English (in marked contrast to Singapore Air and Eva Air) but on this flight, they speak excellent English, the two working my side of the plane in my section of steerage are real hotties and they play Plants Vs Zombies. You gotta love nerdy Asian chicks! (Well, at least I do; that’s why I married the best of them.)

    Food on the outbound flight was nothing particularly good or filling, and I’m not particularly good at eating all the “side” dishes anyway. Our first meal out today was chicken pasta, which was pretty darned good. It came with a “salad” made mostly from potatoes (ugh) but with two good tasting pieces of ham. A bowl of fruit that must have been made just for me (pineapple and peaches, my favorites) and a chocolate brownie (no peanuts) for dessert. It really was like someone picked out most of the menu with my picky taste in mind. If it had been green salad instead of potato it would have been perfect.

    As I’m in front steerage, there are fewer toilets than rear steerage, just two for our section and it’s nearly impossible to get to either side without walking the length of the plane and back, so there’s just one available – or unavailable as the case may be. That’s the bad part. The good part is that the single toilet is larger and you can actually sit down in it. (Well, you could except, every time I’ve gone to use it, we hit turbulence and they send us back to our seats.)

    Basically, apart from them telling me I’d won a contest and upgrading me to first class, things have gone about as well as I could have hoped, so why do I say this is the sh*ts? Well, let me digress for a moment.

    Two trips ago, in 2005 I believe, I was working on a project for work and I was having regular team meetings with our staff and outside vendors. One of those meetings came up during trip when we were up in the mountains near Alishan. I needed to be able to dial into a local phone number to establish the audio conference and use the Internet to connect to the data portion. The hotel we chose had free Internet for the guests. What they didn’t have was wireless Internet and I didn’t have an Ethernet cable.

    Since that day, I never carry my computer without having a cable in my case.

    Staying in Taiwan this trip I took my Airport Express to provide wireless access in my in-laws house. In fact, I did so last trip and one of the wonderful things about Apple wireless routers is that they have the ability to store multiple configurations. My in-laws’ Internet uses PPoE and passwords, unlike typical cable modems in the US. I had all of that stored and ready to go – until those bastards broke into my house in January and stole my Airport Express. (I can only imagine they had no clue what they’d stolen and assumed it was a charger for the iPod they got,)

    Now, the Airport Express is just a small brick, much like the power brick for Apple laptops. It plugs right into the electrical socket and you plug an Ethernet cable into it. This was, of course, all planned for. Remember? I always have an Ethernet cable with me, so we’ve been enjoying wireless mobility for our MacBooks, iPhones and iPad for the last three weeks.

    In fact, I left the Airport Express with my wife so that she can continue to enjoy the benefits while she and the kids are still there.

    And that’s what makes this Ethernet jack built into the arm rest under my left arm the total shi*ts! Because I left the frickin’ Ethernet cable I always carry with me in Taiwan. According to the diagram, there’s even an AC power tap, but I haven’t found, or needed, that yet. Five years I’ve been carrying that cable for this very moment!

    The iPad is doing well, still well over 60% charged. I’ve played a lot of Plants vs Zombies and I’ve watched some Man From Atlantis, Doctor Who Confidential, Horrible Histories and re-watched the Pandorica Opens in anticipation of the thrilling conclusion, which will have finished airing by the time I land and get this posted.

    It’s a pity I can’t post this on the plane.

  • Taiwan 2010 – There are Stories Left to Tell

    There are stories left to tell, like about the vomitorium in the classy restaurant inside the five-star hotel, but they shall have to wait until my return, for in about 30 minutes I’ll be heading out towards the airport to catch in flight 3 hours from then. The family will be staying behind for another 3 weeks and i already (accidentally) reduced James to tears when I told him I’d miss him. I have a feeling this isn’t going to be a pretty farewell at the airport.IMG_0001

    Because the flight is in the mid-afternoon, there’s not much really to do today except pack and eat lunch. I convinced them to take Michelle (and therefore me) to Din Tai Fung for lunch. We got there early and between the 7 of us, we ate a full 7 steamers (70 dumplings). Put in perspective, my 18 isn’t that much, but it was a record for me, and this time Michelle was’t even in the running. Last time she polished off 14, this time only 10. James managed 9 this time and he was desperately trying to keep up (and surpass) his big sister.

    When we left, the crowd was standing at about 250 people waiting to get in for lunch. Din Tai Fung is never hurting for business – nor should they be.

    I didn’t mention much about our flight over on China Air. Frankly, we didn’t want to fly them, but flights were so tight and prices so high we didn’t have a choice. Singapore Air cut back on flights and no longer flies direct to Taipei from LA, which left out our favorite airline. Eva Air, a Taiwanese carrier, couldn’t get us flights on even close to the dates we wanted and were hundreds more per ticket (on days we didn’t want.) I had no major complaints about China Air (Which is, by the way, the national carrier of Taiwan, not China) except that their food isn’t as good or as plentiful, the stewardesses aren’t as good at English, and they’re really skimpy on water and drinks.

    We had a 6 hour nightmare of a wait at LAX last time, this time the wait is longer and the flight back to Phoenix isn’t even direct. It would be another 11 hours back to Phoenix! Insanity! I’ve rented a car and will be driving back it will take 6 hours or so, but I can stop, stretch my legs and have pizza and Dr. Pepper.

    I’ll see you on the other side of the world!

  • Taiwan 2010 – Apples in Taiwan

    The changing face of travelling fascinates me. On my first trip to Taiwan, I didn’t have a cell phone, digital camera or laptop computer.

    Oh how things have changed!

    On this trip, we’re kitted out for every eventuality. Irene and I both have our MacBooks, our iPhones and my iPad.

    Linking it altogether, I brought my Airport Express for wireless access for everyone.

    You know what? 75% of everything I do is on the iPad. About %15 is on the iPhone and the remaining 10% on the MacBook. If it weren’t for Photoshop and tweaking photos beyond what I can do with Photogene on the iPad (wonderful app!), and recording the Skyped podcasts, I wouldn’t need the MacBook at all.

  • Taiwan 2010 – Wearing Glasses Sucks

    About 3 bus stops away from the house is the Taipei Water Park (which, cleverly, appears to be connected to the water treatment plant.) We’ve been meaning to go there since we arrived, but a variety of things such as rain and trips out of town have stopped us. On weekdays, the place is virtually empty and yet still it’s open, unlike the lame-o water parks in Phoenix that are only open a few weeks a year and then, often, only on weekends.

    Today, finally, was the day and also for the first day of the trip it was hot and sunny. So hot and sunny that we considered postponing till another day, but we persevered because the weather forecast made it look like clouds were coming in.

    The park is small, with only three slides, a lazy river, a large meter deep pool, a kids pool and sand beach, but big enough to accommodate about a thousand people. While we were there, when it got crowded, there were about 15 people, which is about the single most enjoyable water park experience ever. Most times when I climbed up to the slides, not only was there no waiting, there was no one else on the entire structure. You could absolutely go anywhere and do anything without any competition for resources whatsoever. On top of that, the whole thing; family admission, tube rental and locker rental cost us US$ 24.

    We chose correctly, too, because the clouds rolled in when we arrived and it was wonderful. About the time we started to leave, a thunderstorm rolled in and poured buckets on everyone. As we were changing, everyone else was forced to retreat from the pools. Spot on perfect timing – except we got soaked again on the way home. It’s still raining buckets this evening, endangering my dinner plans.

    I had no camera to take pictures, but will try to go back and snap some shots of the park from the outside to illustrate.

    Oh, “Why does wearing glasses suck?” you ask. Simple; without glasses, I can’t see and it was at times difficult for me to identify Irene and the kids in even the small crowds. If it had been crowded, I’d have lost them for sure. Also, there were two young American women in tiny bikinis playing in the water park and I never did get a good look at them.